June 25, 2019 — A recently published study has called into question a cornerstone policy argument for segments of the American seafood industry.
For years, government officials, aquaculture proponents, industry experts, and even environmentalists have consistently cited that 90 percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S. comes from foreign markets. However, three researchers say that oft-repeated statistic is misleading, and that the actual figure is closer to 65 percent.
The issue Jessica Gephart, Halley Froehlich and Trevor Branch have with the 90 percent figure is that it creates an assumption all imports contain only foreign caught fish.
“Although this may seem logical, it is not always the case; large quantities of seafood landed in the United States are exported for processing and shipped back into the United States,” they wrote in an opinion piece for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
They also note that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s calculations estimate imported products only account for 70 percent of U.S.-consumed seafood.